It is common practice to consider global space a coherent entity that naturally contains social practices and provides the stage for actors of global politics. Yet, such a view ignores the social process of establishing a global space as a framework for other social practices. This paper suggests that an analysis of cartographic practices is key to understand the historical formation of spaces. Drawing on Bruno Latour, I show how the globe has been assembled through cartographic practices in Europe from 1450-1650. I trace how the emerging discipline of cosmography transformed knowledge of the world, and how the Spanish attempts to map the world during the 16th century put in place a system to cartographically establish a new reality of global space. Finally, the paper focuses on how the world was published by Dutch map makers which disseminated this novel global reality and, in effect, made it mobile. This leads to the conclusion that the global map preceded, and assembled, the globe as a unified abstract space enabling the expansion of European political and economic practices.

Files in this item: 1

This case centers on the efforts of Maersk Drilling to apply its CSR policy to its business operations in Angola, the second largest oil producer on the African continent. The case explores 1) the organizational and strategic integration of CSR initiatives; 2) how strategic notions of CSR (as a mode of value creation) are applied in practice; 3) how strategy relates to compliance in the development of CSR; 4) how the CSR strategy of a multinational company is (or can be) adapted to the local conditions of a developing country. Maersk Drilling’s approach to CSR and the strategic mindset that drives its efforts to be considered a good corporate citizen in Angola, have to be considered in lieu of it being a business unit within a multinational conglomerate: the A.P. Moller – Maersk Group. Therefore, we will start out by presenting the organizational background for CSR in Maersk Drilling and proceed from there. The case reflects Maersk Drilling’s strategic outlook, market situation and organization as of late 2013/early 2014.

Files in this item: 1

Our everyday actions have important consequences for the constitution and
transformation of the local, national, regional and global contexts. How, what, and
with whom we spend, save, invest, buy and produce in our ordinary lives shapes
markets and how states choose to intervene in them. The political, economic, and
social networks with which we associate ourselves provide us not only with meaning
about how we think economic policy is made, but also constitute vehicles for how
economic policy, both at home and abroad, should be made. And while elite actors in
politics and economics obviously have more direct influence, this should not obscure
the point that peripheral actors can challenge the legitimacy of how power is
exercised. Nor should it obscure the point that such actors have a good deal more
agency in terms of determining their own life experiences as well as those of others
through their everyday actions than is commonly recognised.

This paper addresses a puzzle: How is it possible that a country that has established
a broad, export-oriented industrial base at record speed, remains vulnerable to the
vicissitudes of international finance and currency markets? I argue that the Korean
model that was tremendously successful for catching-up, has now reached its limits.
The analysis centers on the co-evolution of industry structure and firm behavior. The
focus is on the role of technological learning for the development of the electronics
industry, a main carrier of Korea´s successful late industrialization. It is shown that
a heavy reliance on credit and an extremely unbalanced industry structure have
given rise to a narrow knowledge base and a sticky pattern of specialization.
Catching-up has focused on capacity and international market share expansion for
homogeneous, mass-produced products; very little upgrading has occurred into
higher-end and rapidly growing market segments for differentiated products and
services. Such truncated upgrading is one important reason for Korea´s
vulnerability to the financial and currency crisis.

Boards are endogenously chosen institutions determined by observable
and unobservable firm characteristics. Empirical studies of large
publicly traded firms have successfully controlled for observable determinants of board size and shown a robust negative relationship between board size and firm performance. The evidence on smaller closely held firms is less clear; we argue that existing work has been incomplete in analyzing the causal relationship due to weak identification strategies. Using a rich data set of almost 6,000 small and medium-sized closely held corporations we provide a causal analysis of board size effects on firm performance using a novel instrument given by the number of children of the founders of the firms. First, we find no empirical evidence of adverse board size effects when the size of the board lies in the typical range for closely held corporations of three to six directors. Second, we find a significantly negative board size effect for the minority of closely held firms that are characterized by having comparatively large boards of seven or more members and non-complex operations.

The causal relationship between insider ownership and market valuation is tested by
simultaneous estimation of the causes and effect of insider ownership among the largest
continental European companies. Controlling for nation and industry effects insider
ownership (measured by the fraction of "closely held" shares) is found to have a positive
effect on market valuation (market-to-book values). And market valuation is found to have a
positive feedback effect on the level of insider ownership. The findings provide empirical
support for a theoretical model proposed by La Porta et al (1999). But the results are also
found to be sensitive to owner identity: while a higher level of financial and corporate insider
ownership is found to increase market valuation, family ownership has no significant effect,
and a higher level of government ownership is found to reduce market valuation.

Files in this item: 1

This working paper presents the CBS text-to-speech tool colloquially
known as the TtT (Tekst-til-Tale). The tool is intended for training of
university-level students, especially linguists training for a degree in
speech technology, and visiting foreign students wanting to improve
their spoken Danish. The TtT is operated through a simple wwwbased
user-interface. Using the TtT requires basic skills in formal
grammar-writing, but no knowledge on other aspects of artificial voice
development such as phonetic-acoustic quantification, prosodic
modelling, and signal generation. The paper includes a user manual.

The paper examines how country tax differences affect a multinational enterprise's choice to centralize or de-centralize its decision structure. Within a simple model that emphasizes the multiple conflicting roles of transfer prices in MNEs – here, as a strategic pre-commitment device and a tax manipulation instrument –, we show that (de-)centralized decisions are more profitable when tax differentials are (small) large.
Keywords: Centralized vs. de-centralized decisions, taxes, MNEs.
JEL-Classification: H25, F23, L23.

Files in this item: 1

Modern global society has seen dramatic changes that throw us into impenetrable ethical problems of a kind never before witnessed in history. By this means, ethical problems constitute the locus of our confrontation with our own life situation. It is this condition that I take to be of fundamental importance when one undertakes to reflect upon the meaning of ethics today. If we approach the issue from the point of view of the history of ideas, we find that throughout the whole of the history of philosophy there have been a series of different attempts to articulate an ethics. Most of them address our concerns about how a human being ought to act in order to realise his or her life in the best or most correct way. I will return to the array of suggestions that have been offered in this regard. What is important for my purposes, meanwhile, is that there is some-thing that precedes ethical considerations, namely, the fact that ethics imposes itself upon the indi-vidual as a vital problem, and as one that cannot be escaped.

Files in this item: 1

This paper is an outcome of my experience as a team member of the Euro-India Innovation mapping project. The project set out to map India’s IT Innovativeness over two years from January 2008-to December 2009. Here I bring to the fore the different methodologies that we reviewed in order to implement the innovation mapping project and our realization that each methodology in itself though useful may not be sufficient to address the complexity of the subject matter due to the vastness of India and its emerging nature. I outline some of the challenges faced by us when designing a methodology for mapping innovation in a large emerging economy. I discuss some solutions and report on how we solved the problem only to be faced with newer challenges. A methodological design is a challenging endeavor in the normal of time, when it comes to doing the same in a large emerging economy the problems becomes compounded. I highlight some of these problems and discuss some solutions in this paper. I conclude this paper with some insights proposing a mix methodology approach has been useful in addressing the challenges of data collection in emerging economies using our Indian experience as a backdrop to our findings.

Based on an exploratory study of 138 firms this study analyzes the development within the field of Knowledge Management (KM) in Danish SMEs in the manufacturing industry. It is proposed that Danish SMEs do not (yet) have formalized knowledge structures, knowledge cultures, knowledge strategies, or knowledge systems in place. Hence, there could well be a large unexploited pool of knowledge assets in the SMEs. Empirical results verify the above propositions and suggestions to build or improve a knowledge process within the SME context are offered. The results of the study lead to challenges within different areas of KM that Danish SMEs face in the quest to stay competitive. Finally, the perspectives and the practical implications of a management orientation that can leverage knowledge advances and improve the types of knowledge that best fit innovative efforts and competitive strategies are also discussed.

Abstract: The paper presents an explorative study of Open Source Software (OSS) focusing on the managerial decisions for acquisition of OSS. Based on three case studies we argue that whereas small organizations often may chose adoption of OSS expecting significant cost savings, a major barrier for larger organizations’ adoption of OSS lies in the organizations’ consolidation of the enterprise architectures, in addition to that OSS will not be adopted before satisfactory delivery and procurement models for OSS are established.
Keywords: Open Source Software, OSS, Enterprise Architecture, Total Cost of Ownership, Delivery and Procurement Model.

Files in this item: 1

In recent years, the leading Japanese wireless operator NTT DoCoMo has risen from
being largely unknown outside Japan to international fame. Ground-breaking service
innovations such as the world’s first wireless internet service, I-mode, the world’s
first third generation wireless service FOMA, as well as the company’s successful
proliferation of its W-CDMA 3G technologies as the UMTS standard in Europe have
generally impressed the troubled telecom industry on its brink to the new era wireless
data services. Conversely, much scientism has been aired whether the NTT DoCoMo
experience applies to European and US contexts due to differences in e.g.
demographics, Internet penetration, and wireless industry structures. To date, these
considerations have largely been based on anecdotal reports in trade magazines and an
increasing number of case studies focused primarily on the I-mode service (e.g.
Mulder and Simpson (2001); Harvard (2000)). Notable, exceptions are Ratliff (2001)
and Williamson and Meegan (2002) that however both point to the need for elevating
insights on NTT DoCoMo. This working paper sets out to contribute to a more
elaborate picture of NTT DoCoMo.
The working paper is outlined as follows. Departing from a sketch of DoCoMo’s
current challenges from the perspective of the CEO Keiji Tachikawa as the financial
year 2003 is coming to an end (March 31 2003), a brief introduction to DoCoMo’s
history and its innovative capabilities initiates the effort to present a more detailed
picture of the company. Then, the normal perception of NTT DoCoMo as a de facto
monopolist with all dominating market and bargaining power is challenged by means
of longitudinal study of the Japanese wireless market’s development from 1992 to
2003. During this period, DoCoMo’s leadership position as increasingly been
challenged by new competitors that emerged from an industry consolidation and
regulatory forces. It is found that the nature of competition has shifted from
DoCoMo’s undisputed dominance to a more dynamic environment signified by
intense service innovation based competition. Then, insights are provided as how the
NTT DoCoMo competes in its new environment. Three key strategic pillars are
analyzed, namely the company’s to approaches the (1) orchestrating of innovation
with the examples of I-mode, C-mode, and Telematics services, (2) relational
challenges with the examples of technology standardization alliances, interfirm
relationships with handset providers and internationalization partners, and lastly (3)
how new growth avenues are explored.

Files in this item: 1

We thank the anonymous reviewers, Harald Biong, and Myles Shaver for their very helpful comments, Kim Vasant Nielsen for excellent research assistance, and Vibeke Henriksen for editorial assistance. Previous versions of this paper have been presented at the Academy of Management Annual Meeting, San Diego, August 1998, the 23rd EIBA Annual Conference, Stuttgart, December 1997, and in seminars at University of Vaasa, Swedish School of Economics, Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration, Norwegian School of Management BI, and at the University of Melbourne. We thank participants at these meetings and seminars, in particular Ingmar Björkman, Andrew Delios, Carl Fey, Karin Fladmoe-Lindkvist, Mats Forsgren, Jean-Francois Hennart, Jan Johanson, Heli Korhonen, and Stephen Nicholas for their many comments and suggestions.